Worldbuilding & Town Size by Population

[DocBadwrench]

I have a question that would be helpful to know for all of us who are running our own gameworlds. In order to ask it properly, I'll tell you what my problem is.

My new adventurers are starting off in an out of the way village that I imagined had a population of 500. With this, I am assuming that a fair amount of the non-specialist farmer types are working fields and not all crammed into the walls of the town to make up that 500 number.

All that said, how large (on, say, a gridmap) should my town be? I don't expect to draw the thing out on a grid where each square is 5', but what about 10' or 20'? Now that I'm in the groove (in the DM'ing sense), I'm prepared to give the players the opportunity to essentially explore the town. I'll have my notes (where are the few blacksmiths in town, for example) and just wing it from there.

Back in the day, when I used to DM, this was something I thought about a lot, even to the point of using something called "City" which was a complex Excel document that attempted to quantify the qualities of a settlement based upon population and environmental variables. But whatever - it doesn't need to be ultra-realistic, just believable and easy to use.

What are the conceptual tools you fellow worldbuilders use when you have to build a city? For my party, I lift my kingdom's "resources" list from Civilization. I lift my town/city "building list" from Age of Empires, Medieval: Total War or any other history-esque game that can help me.

That's all dandy, of course, but it doesn't help me figure on just how big the town is that sits around it.

I'm crossposting this thing to WotC forums in the hopes of getting a more wide response

 

[Vermonter]

I appreciate that you like to develop your starting area in a bit more detail. I have the same bent.

A couple related links you might enjoy reading for inspiration:
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm
http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/

I think a village of 500 sounds reasonable. The first thing to consider is that most of the people would likely live in extended family households. Second, a majority would likely be farmers, or supplement their lifestyle with personal farms. If a typical family had about 6 members (probably low, but typical in D&D) you have about 80 households. From there you need to decide how much it is a place that is dense, versus one where every building has a lot behind it.

The other key thing is to consider why the town is there. A crossroads, geological feature like a rare hill-top or natural well, a navigable stream, or even the still useful remnants of an old keep or monastery are reasons people might settle in a place. Obviously some of these features might take up quite a bit of space by themselves.